- From: Owen <owenrodda@optusnet.com.au>
- Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 00:04:09 +1000
- To: "'wai-ig list'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
- Cc: "'Scarlett Julian \(ED\)'" <Julian.Scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk>
I personally take the entity-encoded example a step further and URL-encode parts of the email link as well. An example: <a href="mailto:username%40hostname%2ecom">username<abbr title=" at ">@</abbr>hostname<abbr title=" dot ">.</abbr>com</a> I have no idea how "smart" email harvesters are these days, but it probably isn't worth the effort for them to decode this kind of address considering how many plain-text emails are available. Note that there's nothing special involved - if the email harvesting script is attached to any browser, it would have no problems reading that. This solution works with no apparent side-effects in the browsers I've tested. It foils simple searches for mailto: or username@hostname.com without changing the link's appearance. Further protection can be provided by substituting an image for any characters in the displayed email address, usually either the '@' symbol or the entire address. That's not as accessible, of course. Any suggestions, questions or improvements are welcome. -- Owen Rodda -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Scarlett Julian (ED) Sent: Monday, 18 August 2003 11.01 pm To: wai-ig list Subject: Hiding email addresses in an accessible way Does anyone have any way of hiding email addresses from spidering that doesn't use javascript? We use a CMS and have no way of stopping content authors from using their work email address as a contact (and in the interests of open government we wouldn't want to anyway) which means that our organisation is opening itself to huge amounts of spam. If there was some bit of server-side witchcraft that we could use to obscure these from email harvesters then I would dearly love to hear it. I realise that we could use @ instead of @ in the mark-up but I'm petty sure that spiders are wise to this now. Obviously I'd rather not use client-side scripting if at all possible. A couple of constraints: the address must be a useable link (mailto: unless anyone knows any other way) the address must appear on the page so that non-IT-savvy users recognise that it is an email address i.e. no replacing "@" with "AT" or "." with DOT Thanks all. Julian
Received on Monday, 18 August 2003 10:13:48 UTC